Cities

Nairobi, a global leader in using data informatics and mapping quality of life

Nairobi, 9 March 2015 — The explosion in the use of mapping and data analytics to identify hotspots of insecurity and vulnerability has been directly aided by Kenyan developers, technologists, and the entrepreneurial spirit pulsating in Nairobi. See more.

Seeking to avoid a recurrence of violence, Ushahidi deployed Uchaguzi, meaning "election" in Swahili, to allow citizens, voting monitors, and officials to document campaigning, provide witness, and share the experiences of varied geographic and ethnic communities engaged in the process. In 2010, Kenya headed towards a constitutional referendum, and instead of being passive, citizens actively prepared not only to vote, but also to document events within their communities. The platform was again deployed to track the 2013 Presidential elections, with much success. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks at the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi's Westlands neighborhood, Ushahidi began mapping blood donation centers where concerned citizens could provide a critical and direct relief service to those affected.

Urban diagnostics and slum appraisals have also benefited tremendously from community mapping efforts. When the Map Kibera project launched, it was a revolutionary idea by a dedicated group of slum residents to provide their neighbors, city planners, and community workers with a geography of life in one of Africa's best-known unplanned communities. Building on the success achieved through these projects, Slum Dwellers International (SDI) undertook similar efforts in the Mathare informal settlement. The visualizations provided by these collaborative efforts have assisted residents and development workers in improving clean water and sanitation access, security through increased lighting, and community engagement and a sense of ownership.

As Linnet Kwamboka, Founder and Director of DataScience Ltd, points out, without the tools and mechanisms to interpret and transform data into usable information, its application and use can be limited. Addressing this, DataScience Ltd. provides data intelligence services that allow ordinary citizens, government agencies, and development organizations to use analytic methodologies that are relevant to their context. Working as an intermediary, DataScience assists in building a more informed society by serving as a mediator, taking on the role of interpreting and transforming the large raw data sets into engaging and informative content that can be digested by a wide cross-section of the population.

Nairobi is home to a wide diversity of ad hoc groups and large-scale organizations dedicated to using new technologies and information services to meet the challenges of corruption, development, and urbanization. Many of the tools developed out of collaborative efforts in the capital have been disseminated throughout the country and around the world, with widespread and positive impacts. Close.

Impact-sourcing, demographics, and the details of youth unemployment

Nairobi, 4 February 2015 — Over 90 percent of Kenyans under 30 can read and write, resulting in a highly-skilled population that faces seemly intractable unemployment rates reaching up to 70 percent in some communities. Impact-sourcing, a strategy that targets employment of impoverished and disadvantaged individuals, and technology literacy programs have the potential to leverage Kenya's comparative advantage. See more.

Impact-sourcing, demographics, and the details of youth unemployment

Hilary Nicole Zainab Ervin, Nairobi Community Manager

Youth comprise roughly 70 percent of Kenya's population and 65 percent of the nation's workforce, yet they face the highest rate of unemployment — nearly three times that of other countries. The fertility rate has declined everywhere in the nation except Nairobi, where it continues to climb. Youth 15-24 represent over 24 percent of the city's population, which is the largest share of youth population in any province nationwide, due in large part to migration in search of employment.

Dubbed the Silicon Savannah, Kenya — and, more specifically, Nairobi — has been at the forefront of a rapid rise in the services industry. Companies like DaproIM, Nairo Bits, and AkiraChix are just a few examples of firms that are leveraging a large youth population and the rapid evolution of information and communication technologies to achieve targeted development priorities.

The founder of DaproIM, Steve Muthee passed away late last year. An Ashoka fellow and early advocate of promoting professional services for disadvantaged youth, Murthee was a heavyweight in the push to promote impact-sourcing to tackle persistent poverty and inequality among Nairobi's youth. Founded in 2006, today the company boost 100 full-time and 400 part-time university employees, currently providing a wide range of data services to multinational companies, government institutions, media outlets, and others. A testament to his legacy, the company led the way for indigenous business-process servicing companies — and are still going strong and taking on new clients as they continue to practice what they preach.

Nairo Bits brands itself as a Digital Design School, and has a track record reaching back ten years. The company identified early on the growth potential in leveraging the technological savvy of a large youth bulge in Nairobi's informal settlements to have a direct impact on livelihoods. Nairo Bits equips youth with knowledge and skills in web design, IT skills, creative deployment of multimedia, and entrepreneurship. The curriculum goes further, incorporating elements of character development and general life skills that increase the chances of employment and the potential for innovation. They have an employment rate of 90 percent among their graduated students, a decidedly positive indicator of their programming.

Akira Chix is a disruptive social impact company nurturing the next generation of female technologists and empowering them with the education and technical skill to develop innovative solutions to address Africa's most pressing challenges. The group provides training, mentorship, and outreach programming that increase the positive impact of women in their community while building hard skills in technology. They have successfully enrolled three classes and just took on their 2015 students as they gear up for another year of coding, development, and technology innovation — targeting a demographic that is critical if achieving and sustaining equitable development is to be realized in Nairobi.

What all these companies have in common is a dedication to innovation and a knowledge that leveraging youth and Kenya's comparative advantage in technology services are critical to pushing the nation forward. As Nairobi embraces a new year of opportunity, a recent announcement by the Global Social Benefit Institute Accelerator program welcoming two local entrepreneurs and social impact organizations, Youth Banner and ICT for Development, gets the local innovation and technology community off to a good start. Close.

Nairobi, 8 January 2015 — Nairobi has long been at the forefront of the movement to leverage technology to address poverty challenges. Innovative social enterprises, nonprofits, and public-private partnerships continue to be formed and incubated by a number of diverse collaborative working hubs and hackspaces around the city. See more.

Hilary Nicole Zainab Ervin, Nairobi Community Manager

Seated in the Bishop Maguwa building across from Uchumi Hyper on Ngong Road, you will find NaiLab. One of Nairobi's most dynamic collaborative working spaces, NaiLab serves as a startup accelerator for high impact entrepreneurs and social-minded business ventures. NaiLab was launched in 2011 as a partnership between the 1% Club, consultancy firm Accenture, and NaiLab Ltd. In January of 2013 a $1.6 million initiative in partnership with the Kenyan Government was launched to incubate high-impact technology firms and lower the entry barriers for ICT entrepreneurs looking to start and scale their businesses in Kenya.

To date, they have successfully graduated three classes of 16 start-ups and have another five companies enrolled for the 2015 season. Part of NaiLab's 2014 class, SokoText, is a company that leverages simple mobile technology to aggregate trader demands across informal settlements to make wholesale pricing available to small-scale traders. A high-impact technology company that provides kiosk owners within their network free texting and discounted food alongside financial literacy and business training incentives, SokoText is unlocking markets and breaks barriers to access.

To address these needs, in 2012 Yente opened its first Women's Business Center in Nairobi, Kenya with a sister project launched in Arequipa, Peru. The core activities of the center are to engage in business development, ICT trainings, capacity development of individual entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial networks as well as creating linkages between stakeholders, among other objectives. Operated and owned by the Sustainable Education and Enterprise Development (SEED) Trust, an organization that targets female entrepreneurs and education of underprivileged children, the YWBC focuses on micro, small, and medium level enterprises (MSMEs) owned by Kenyan women.

Nairobi, 4 December 2014 — An individual's propensity to save is directly linked to their ability to begin the ascent out of poverty. Increased savings and micro-credit opportunities, alongside financial literacy training, are key potential growth opportunities for Kenya. In Nairobi a number of groups are developing innovative capacity development approaches to increase effective utilization of available financial products. See more.

Hilary Nicole Zainab Ervin, Nairobi Community Manager

According to the FinAccess 2013 Survey, utilization of formal banking services in Kenya by adults has grown from 41 percent in 2009 to over 66 percent by 2013. Over the same period, the percentage of individuals using non-prudential [mobile] banking options as their primary monetary transaction method has increased significantly as well, from 30 percent to more than 63 percent respectively. In addition, rates of usage of informal lending methods and those excluded from banking services entirely have steadily declined.

Safaricom and Vodaphone revolutionized banking for Kenyans in 2007 with the introduction of M-Pesa. For the first time, highly impoverished individuals who were previously unable to access formal banking, were able to deposit money to an account. The services available to M-Pesa users took another leap forward in 2012 with the introduction of M-Shwari.

M-Shwari allows individuals to make deposits via their mobile phone to a savings account that generates interest at a rate of five percent a year. The service provides a flat interest rate of 7.5 percent on 30-day loans up to 20,000Ksh ($240 USD) that requires no collateral, has no transaction fees, and provides instant loan processing. A recipient's loan amount is dependent on a number of factors; the amount saved and the regularity of deposits to the service rank highly as advantages in obtaining a favorable loan determination.

In 2013, under the Ministry of Devolution and Planning, President Uhuru Kenyatta instituted the Uwezo Fund as a key Social Pillar of Kenya's Vision 2030. Such programs are critical to empowering some of the most vulnerable in Nairobi. However as Wanjiku Muhia, the MP from Nyandarua, points out, it is critical to train women in acquiring entrepreneurial skill so that recipients are equipped with the knowledge to make wise investment choices and not simply dig deeper into poverty.

Organization such as Faidisha SACCO, CAP Youth Empowerment Institute, and Shining Hope for Communities, operate to fill this gap. Faidisha provides their members with opportunities to expand small and micro businesses through the utilization of Kiva loans. Founded in 2012, Faidisha Kiva has registered 160 members who are saving between 20 to 50 shillings ($0.22 to $.55 USD) a day. They have conducted financial literacy training with over 50 members and provided larger business loans ranging from 3,000ksh to 30,000ksh ($33 to $332 USD) to 10 of their members while maintaining a repayment rate of 95 percent.

CAP Youth Empowerment Institute, a nation-wide network of 11 training centers, approaches financial literacy among youths from a capacity building perspective. Providing financial education alongside a diverse package of micro-enterprise and small business development trainings, they target their curriculum regionally to meet real economic demands. The results have been impressive, for example the Buru Buru Center in Nairobi have enrolled 883 youths in nine batches, providing training to 774 to date with another 98 undergoing the program currently. Of those, 511 youths have obtained employment and 49 entrepreneurs are operating small businesses.

Isaiah Opiyo, a financial literacy trainer, highlights the importance of understanding one's members in the design and implementation of financial literacy training initiatives. The organization Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO) addresses this through a holistic approach to micro-enterprise, comprehensive household education and grassroots based development infrastructure decision making. They target Kiberia and Mathare, two of Nairobi's large informal settlements, to achieve broad-based development from a gender equity approach; ensuring that all members are included in the services provided at the household and community-levels. If the past is any indicator, these innovative solutions, and other like it, will continue to evolve to meet the increased citizen demand of Nairobi's evolving financial services sector. Close.

Gendering development planning to address persistent quality of life challenges

Nairobi, 13 November 2014 — Informal settlements in Nairobi pose unique challenges to urban development, public health, and environmentally sustainable land planning and policy actualization. Transformative grassroots efforts to address these challenges are making headway towards minimizing some of the complex inequalities associated with life in Nairobi's informal tenements. See more.

The gendered impact of inaccessible hygiene facilities and affordable clean water in densely populated urban settings has direct impacts on overall public and environmental health. As Sydney Gray, leader of the organization Mama Mmaji, points out, "water is a women's issue." Women slum dwellers face both socially constructed and economic barriers in their ability to secure housing contracts, negotiate fair prices for clean water, and access improved sanitation facilities. They are five times more likely to be unemployed than their male neighbors and live in a context where a nighttime trip to the bathroom is a significant risk marker for rape.

According to the Pamoja Trust, two million people live in Nairobi's informal slums and settlements, which are jam-packed onto only one percent of land in the capitol city. Constituting over half of the cities population these individuals inhabitant only five percent of the city's residential land area. Covering an area of 5sq miles (2.5sq km), Kibera alone is home to over one million individuals, who account for nearly one fourth of Nairobi's population.

Indeed, slum-upgrading and grassroots resilience approaches to addressing quality of life issues on captured public and private lands in Nairobi continue to evolve as does the landscape of policies and citizen responses to them. It is likely that the most successful initiatives will continue to be those that incorporate economic, social and environmental human rights approach that engages residents of informal settlements at the core of their design. Close.

Master planning Nairobi's way out of the jam

Nairobi, 8 October 2014 — It is estimated that Kenya loses roughly 37 billion KSH annually in gross domestic product (GDP) as a result of Nairobi traffic jams. This valuation neglects to account for the environmental or carbon pollution and human public health costs associated with heavy traffic flows, congestion, and associated injuries from road accidents. A number of public-private partnerships, non-governmental organizations and tech-savvy entrepreneurs have been developing innovative solutions to address these challenges. See more.

Master planning Nairobi's way out of the jam

Hilary Nicole Zainab Ervin, Nairobi Community Manager

Traffic congestion and transportation bottlenecks in, around, and through Nairobi city are well known to residents, lambasted in the press, and highlighted by politicians. Over the past few years a significant amount of investment in research and infrastructure development has worked to increase the efficiency and fluidity of commuting for Nairobi workers. However, much still needs to be done if the priorities laid out in Kenya's Vision 2030 are to be realized.

Originally founded as a halfway transit point on the Mombasa-Kisumu railway line; Nairobi has rapidly grown into a national and regional hub for business and trade while also serving as a major access point for goods bound to the wider East African Community. Greater Nairobi has a population growth rate of 4 percent and is home to 8 percent of Kenya's 38.6 million residents. Poorly planned infrastructure, lack of accounting for actual population growth, and inadequate public expenditure on transportation continues to have direct impacts on millions of residents daily in their jockeying to get to town.

Kenyans are nothing if not innovative and industrious, a characteristic clearly demonstrated for example by the demand-driven nature of current matatu networks. However, a significant challenge to updating current transportation infrastructure has remained the lack of reliable data and information on these informal networks. User-driven applications and mapping efforts have resulted in a number of options available to Nairobi residents seeking information on these transit routes and transfer points. These action-oriented research projects have been used by policy planners and incorporated into policy planning. These are decidedly positive trends. The Digital Matatus project, Ma3route, and Sonar, highlighted in an early URB.im article, are still active and serving the needs of commuters. On the other hand, cashless payment systems such as Bebapay, which were set to launch in July 2014, have met with less success, but are still undergoing adaptation and available for use on a number of bus lines.

The Sustainable Transportation Solutions for East African Cities initiative, or Sustran East Africa, a project launched in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UN-HABITAT, and Nairobi's municipal government in conjunction with a number of private sector partners, will assist the Ministry of Transportation and the Kenya Urban Roads Authority to address congestion issues in the capital in line with Integrated Urban Development Masterplan for the City of Nairobi (NIUPLAN) unveiled in May 2014, the first update to the capital's planning documentation since the 1970s. This comprehensive and strategic report is broken down into six thematic areas covering: (i) Land use and housing; (ii) Governance and institution; (iii) Population and social system/urban economy; (iv) Urban transport (road, railway, airport); (v) Environment; (vi) Infrastructure (water supply, wastewater, power, solid waste and disaster prevention, ICT & telecommunications). The 60-day period of public comment on the NIUPLAN recently closed and based on the tone of political willpower it is hopeful that Governor Evans Kidero and the Nairobi City County Government will follow through on stated commitments.

Plans to implement three Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridors are still underway for Athi River to Kikuyu town, Thika to Nairobi Central Business District. and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Nairobi Central Business District. These BRT networks are intended to decrease the cost and time associated with commuting for residents who use public transport, which is roughly 30 percent of city residents. In addition, updates to Thika and Outer Ring Road, the Tatu City Development, and the Nairobi Metropolitan Services Improvement Project (NaMSIP) are ongoing planning projects that intend to address many of the current challenges faced by the city's 3.2 million inhabitants while they attempt to walk, ride, and drive to and from work each day. Close.

From slums to significance: the communities shaping our urban future

The two megatrends of demographic growth and urbanization are rapidly transforming human settlement from rural to predominantly urban environments. This is particularly true in Asia and Africa, where the UN forecasts that the urban population will grow from 2.3 billion people in 2011 to 4.5 billion in 2050. Many large cities in these regions are struggling with how to provide services, housing and jobs for large numbers of rural migrants. These migrants are often highly vulnerable: although they have moved to the city in search of jobs and access to services, the informal neighborhoods that receive them lack infrastructure and are often removed from main centers of economic activity. A lack of economic opportunities and poor living conditions set the stage for marginalization, instability and violence. Read more.

Building the city of the future, today, in the developing world

Nairobi — the capital of Kenya — is growing at a tremendous pace. The population is about 4 million, and the city is growing at about 7 percent per year. Nairobi is the most prominent city in East Africa and the hub for the entire region. The city is brimming with innovation and entrepreneurship. For example, the mobile money platform MPESA was developed in Nairobi, and has transformed the business landscape not just in the region, but around the world. Read more.

Going digital in Nairobi's chaotic transport system

Imagine this: You step out of your house knowing exactly when your bus will roll up to your stop, you climb aboard and pay by tapping your phone/card on the conductor's reader, you sit down, log onto the vehicle's free wifi system and either read the news, write emails and surf your social network, or play interactive games like #bestdressed, which encourage you to nominate one of your fellow passengers in a city-wide transport beauty pageant. We could be in London, Stockholm, or Tokyo, but we aren't. This is Nairobi and the above scenario is no longer quite as sci-fi as it would have seemed a couple of years ago. Read more or discuss.

Migration has often been identified as a central component of urbanisation, and with the rise of a 'mobility' paradigm, whereby movement is recognised as a rising necessity, the focus is on why people move and the nature of such movement. Novel innovations now enable our speed of movement, while services and infrastructure continues to build networks between spaces, people, and opportunities. However, in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa the question has been raised on what happens when urban agglomerations hosting migrants fail to secure livelihoods (see Bryceson, 2011)? Research in migration showcases the articulation of circular patterns of movement, rising rates of return, and greater insecurities in whether goals are achieved. Such raises an additional question - to what extent are those using, adopting, and experiencing, migration becoming stuck within such a mobility paradigm? Further, what do migrants do to get them out of this trap and achieve aspirations? Read more.